Kilauea's volcanic activity - whether plumes of smoke and ash or lava flowing into the sea - can often be seen from the official county viewing area in Kalapana.

Kilauea's volcanic activity - whether plumes of smoke and ash or lava flowing into the sea - can often be seen from the official county viewing area in Kalapana.

Photo: Tor Johnson, HTA

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A green shoot signals new life in lava-covered Kalapana and Kaimu.

A green shoot signals new life in lava-covered Kalapana and Kaimu.

Photo: Jeanne Cooper, Special To The Chronicle

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Several private homes border geothermally heated Champagne Pond, which the public can access by a walkway or hike along the beach on its ocean side.

Several private homes border geothermally heated Champagne Pond, which the public can access by a walkway or hike along the beach on its ocean side.

Photo: Jeanne Cooper, Special To The Chronicle

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The Kalapana Creations stand near Kaimu Beach sells local crafts and jewelry.

The Kalapana Creations stand near Kaimu Beach sells local crafts and jewelry.

Photo: Jeanne Cooper, Special To The Chronicle

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Big Island's Puna side often overlooked

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Signs of death and destruction were everywhere: scarred landscapes, buried towns, plumes of smoke and the glow of fire smoldering in the distance. Still, there was a truth facing us more sobering than the brutal scene:

There just isn't enough time.

We had planned to explore Puna, a volcanically active area on the Big Island, over the course of a few days, spending evenings in Hilo, about an hour's drive away. On paper, it was a sound idea - no chic dining scene, no postcard beaches, no ubiquitous zip line. But soon we learned that this southeastern corner of Hawaii's Big Island - the "Wild, Wild East" to some - has more than enough diversions and attractions in which you could lose yourself for a few weeks.

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Don't believe it? Ask the several generations of visitors who decided to find themselves by just staying lost.

Most of the bizarre, mysterious landscape is credited to ka wahine 'ai honua ("the woman who devours the land"), also known as Pele. Millions have visited her legendary home in Kilauea Crater, just to the east in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, which itself offers days (rather than the typical hours) of exploration.

But far fewer have veered off the main highway heading from the park to Hilo to experience the wake of destruction along the narrow triangle of Pahoa, Kapoho and Kalapana-Kaimu - as well as the people and culture shaped by living at destruction's door.

Eerie sites

Trying to maximize our time, we opted to spend our first day on KapohoKine Adventures' "Secrets of Puna" van tour, led by Emma, a Native Hawaiian whose family goes back many generations in the area. Picking us up at our vacation rental house - common accommodations in the area, which has no traditional hotels or motels - Emma drove us over unpaved roads to the easternmost point on the island, Cape Kumukahi. During a 1960 eruption, its tall metal beacon was spared from harm at the last minute when the lava split and flowed around the structure.

But the family farms, homes and other buildings in nearby Kapoho were not so lucky. Our guide took us to a place that defined poignancy: Kapoho's Japanese American cemetery, half-covered in lava, where flowers lay on a few of the surviving sites. (Sacramento author Frances Kakugawa describes the scene in her recent short story collection, "Kapoho: Memoirs of a Modern Pompeii," published after my visit.)

A red road made of older crushed lava led us past a set of post office boxes - many now used by people living "off the grid" and in the woods - standing eerily in an empty field of rocks and weeds, the former heart of Kapoho. Close to Pu'u Kukae ("Poop Hill" would be a genteel translation) lie the former recreation areas of Warm Springs and Higashi Pond, filled in by the relentless lava flow of 1960.

We could have also visited the ghostly molds of ohia tree trunks engulfed by lava during a 1790 flow, had Lava Tree State Monument in nearby Pahoa not been closed for renovation; it has since reopened, with a new paved entrance and fewer invasive albizia trees for better viewing. But we were just as happy to spend more time in the ghost town of Kalapana, an area devastated 200 years later where all roads end in lava.

Kalapana now springs to life during the Wednesday night market at Uncle Robert's, one of the few places to survive the months-long lava flow of 1990. Kalapana's quaintly painted Star of the Sea church, built in 1927, remains standing because parishioners decided to move it a few miles up Highway 130, only hours before molten rock streamed across its former site.

Lava destroys, creates

Close by, the fishing village and palm-lined black sand beach of Kaimu also disappeared under the slow-moving waves of molten rock. Before heading on the path to the new, rugged shoreline, we stopped at the lone craft stand to pick up some coconut seedlings to help restore the once-lush landscape. No green thumb is needed, as Emma showed us: You just wedge the sprouting coconut between lava rocks, and nature eventually takes its course.

Several miles away, lava is still snaking its slow course from the mountain to the sea, and is often visible from the official viewing area at the end of Highway 130. Although the county announced plans in March to close the free site in the next fiscal year, it is still open, with a telephone hotline listing current hours and lava sightings.

Pele's destruction is also creation, of course. While it's important to heed warnings to stay on trails when hiking on newly formed land, Emma encouraged us to immerse ourselves in the warm springs and teeming tide pools that have risen from all the geothermal rumblings. The grand finale of our tour was an extended dip in the 90-degree waters of oceanfront Ahalanui Pond, a large, spring-fed, shallow pool in a recently renovated county park along Highway 137.

Warm swimming holes

Ahalanui is a lot easier to access than Champagne Pond, another tranquil, deliciously warm body of water fronting Kapoho Bay. While technically open to the public, you can't drive there unless you're staying in the gated community of Kapoho Beach Lots - or you have four-wheel drive and you've followed a local pickup truck across the jagged black shoreline to the pond's ocean side.

Fortunately, our group of five had opted for a vacation rental inside the gates, the two-bedroom Clearpond Paradise, which as its name suggests comes with its own thermal pond and a paradisiacal vista of Kapoho Bay. Walking on the shore behind it, we discovered a mandala of red lava and spotted surfers and 'opihi pickers braving the waves.

Just outside the gates was the Kapoho Farm Stand, where a woman universally known as Smiley sells papayas, bananas and, for $5, admission to Green Lake, a deep freshwater pool in a crater atop Green Mountain (Pu'u Kapoho). Local legend has it that Jacques Cousteau tried to plumb its depths in a submarine and gave up trying.

I can understand how Cousteau felt: We ran out of time before we could hike up Green Mountain, or snorkel in the Waiopae Tidepools, a renowned marine life conservation area in the conveniently ungated community of Kapoho Vacationland.

The secrets of Puna may not be as deep as Green Mountain, but there are just too many to discover in a few days.

If you go

Getting there

Pahoa is three hours from Kailua-Kona, which has nonstop service from the Bay Area, and about an hour from Hilo, which offers connecting flights. All locations below have a Pahoa mailing address, with more specific locations listed because online maps are often inaccurate.

Where to stay

We rented Clearpond Paradise in Kapoho Beach Lots, $200-$225 a night for two, through Hawaiiislanddreams.com, which also lists other Pahoa-Kapoho vacation rentals; (808) 930-6880. For licensed bed-and-breakfast options, see www.stayhawaii.com.

What to do

KapohoKine Adventures' daylong "Secrets of Puna" tour is now available only as a cruise excursion (usually $179) or by special charter; (808) 964-1000, kapohokineadventures.com. But most of its stops - including Star of the Sea painted church, Kaimu, the county-run Ahalanui Pond and state-run MacKenzie recreation area and Lava Trees monument - are open to the public.

Kalapana Night Market, 5 to 9 p.m. Wednesdays, at end of Highway 137 in Kaimu.